Daniel Radcliffe: Brexit ‘Scary as Sh*t’

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe is likely disappointed with the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union on Thursday — in an interview earlier this week, the actor called both the Brexit and the political ascendance of Donald Trump in the United States “scary as sh*t.”

In an interview with Vulture to promote his new off-Broadway show Privacy, the 26-year-old connected the U.K.’s exit from the EU with Trump’s rise to become the presumptive GOP presidential nominee in the United States.

“You can dress it up however you want, but ultimately, with a lot of the people who want to exit, there’s a sense of jingoistic “We don’t want to take orders from bloody Frenchies,'” Radcliffe told Vulture in an interview published the day of the Brexit vote.

“It’s the worst kind of nationalism, the worst kind of patriotism, and it’s scary as sh*t, and a woman was killed!” the actor added, apparently referring to the murder of British MP Jo Cox.

Radcliffe called the EU referendum “similar to the Trump thing” in the United States, in that people dismissed the possibility of the seriousness of his candidacy before being surprised by a later surge of support.

“It worries me that — we don’t really have a version of Trump, but our very far right wing party, they obviously would never have incited somebody to that violence,” Radcliffe continued, referring to Cox’s death. “I’m not saying they did that because they didn’t. But equally, you spend that much time fearmongering about race and religion and that’s going to have an effect sometimes.”

Radcliffe’s new off-Broadway show examines privacy in the digital era. It is set to run from July 5 through August 7 at New York City’s Public Theater.

Radcliffe’s latest film, Swiss Army Man, opened to $116,000 from three theaters this weekend for a strong $38,000 per-theater average, according to Box Office Mojo. Radcliffe plays a flatulent corpse whom co-star Paul Dano must ride to safety off of a deserted island in the wildly divisive movie that caused more than a few walkouts at Sundance in January.

Read Radcliffe’s full interview with Vulture here.

 

Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum